


The Art of Killing

by serendipitousDescent



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Murder, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-14 00:04:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3401096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitousDescent/pseuds/serendipitousDescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was his first mission in the Akatsuki and it came as no surprise that they wanted to see if he could use his explosives in situations outside of a battle.</p>
<p>(Or where Deidara proved that he doesn't think of his explosions as art because of the moment of colour against a soft sky.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Killing

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned, Deidara is entirely unrepentant in this. I wanted to show a different take on what his art is and what it means to him which resulted in this little piece here. 
> 
> Also, you could read the interaction between him and Sasori at the end as pre-slash if you wanted!

Deidara’s love for explosions wasn’t a secret. That would have been impossible given his techniques and them along with his new membership to the Akatsuki had paved the road to infamy for him. Even despite that, his all-consuming obsession with the various ways he could make the sky flash with red and orange and yellow had become such a large part of himself that it was inseparable from everything else.

(If that last good-bye to Iwa had included one of his biggest pieces to date then that was no one’s business but his own. Fingers and toes and pieces of guts had fallen from the sky for a good half an hour afterwards.

Some would have called it a flashy exit. He liked to think of it as an effective way to remind the village he’d grown up in that they were the ones who’d turned him into a so-called freak of nature and he’d been the one to thrive.)

His partner was under the impression that his enjoyment simply came from flashes of pretty colours against a soft, unending sky. There was still time to convince him otherwise. Then again he couldn’t see those wooden figurines as art either. He wouldn’t be swayed to Sasori’s way of thinking regardlessly, no matter how insistent his partner had been the last couple weeks they’d been forced together.

“Look, I - I don’t know where it is! But if you let me go back, I could find out. They trust me, it wouldn’t be difficult,” the man chained to the chair in front of him begged.

Deidara tilted his head to the side as if he were seriously contemplating the offer but he could feel Sasori’s eyes digging into the back of his head. This was the deciding moment; the moment that determined if his membership to the organization and thus his life would be terminated.

“Sure, was what he finally said, just to see the momentary flash of relief in the jade-coloured eyes of his victim, “I’d just have to get the information from you afterwards then, yeah? So, would that be before or after you tell the Kazekage that an S-class criminal is trying to steal the scroll on threat of your life? I want to know when I should detonate the bombs.”

The nameless shinobi tried to scramble backwards, the restraints harshly digging into his wrists and that sliver of jade steadily growing smaller. Denials were stumbling out of him. As if Deidara was really stupid enough to believe them.

“You really thought I was just going to let you walk out of here alive! Oh, that’s right, yeah.”

A delicious-sounding whimper reached his ears and a grin involuntarily spread across his face at the power that rushed through his veins. Such a weak man. He hadn’t even laid a hand on him yet.

He leaned in, his lips brushing against the edge of the shinobi’s ear. “I’ll let you go back to your village as soon as your body is so riddled with explosives that once I detonate them, everything and everyone within a five-block radius will be destroyed.”

“Please, I swear I don’t-”

Deidara shoved his fingers into the man’s mouth and forced it open before anything else could be said. Slick, sticky saliva covered the slim digits but he didn’t care. Art, his art in particular, was a messy thing. It would never reach its full potential if he wasn’t willing to get messy right along with it as if the process of creation could be repeated infinitely onto his own body.

(He’d found this out during his first out-of-village mission. Eight years old, still working on figuring out his explosion techniques and paired with teammates that were at least five years older than him. Suffice to say, the mission had not gone as expected. But as he’d laid on the ground with sweat dripping down the back of his neck and a mangled corpse laying on top of him, all he could think was beautiful. 

Coincidentally, that was the same time he’d learned how to get blood stains out.)

As if his thoughts were being projected for all to hear, a look of horror started to etch itself onto the weak man’s features. Deidara found himself hoping that the image would imprint itself onto his brain and stay there until he eventually went out just as all of his creations did.

In the meantime, his other hand left the pouch at his side for the first time since this pleasant conversation had begun and he let his fingers uncurl slowly and purposely. The man’s efforts to get away increased tenfold at the sight of what laid there. A few dozen spiders squirmed in the palm of his hand, each of them small and oddly coloured. One fell and there was only a moment between it hitting the ground and then bursting into a flash of bright yellow light. There was only one thing better than an explosion like that but he’d be seeing that sight again sooner rather than later.

Only a pathetic man would have fought as hard as this one did as Deidara held his hand over the open orifice and allowed his creations to crawl inside. He didn’t need to be able to see the man’s face to know that they were quickly scrambling to make their way down his throat. It wouldn’t be long before they reached his stomach and then continued to disperse throughout the rest of his body.

Pathetic men made the best works of art.

“You’re going to tell me where that scroll is now, yeah,” he said, “Not because you’ll walk out of here alive if you do but because here isn’t the worst place your body could detonate.”

There was a pause and the shinobi’s lips trembled even after Deidara pulled his fingers away.

“I - I don’t know anything!” the shinobi cried out once the spiders had crawled their way past his throat.

“You don’t know anything? I’m sure if you think a little harder, you’ll find something to tell us. Or you could use your imagination to see people you know lying on the ground with their bodies in bits and pieces, yeah. Your Kage, perhaps, but it could be your girlfriend, your mother, your father, maybe a sibling. You wouldn’t even know when it’s going to happen, just that it will.”

There it was.

The pathetic creature in front of him didn’t respond but Deidara had seen it. He’d seen the moment where the desperation and fear had broken into something else, something much more useful to his efforts. Something a bit like resignation. The only thing left to do was push one last time.

“Tell me what you know, yeah. I don’t have enough generosity to give you any more chances,” he said.

“It’s not in the village,” the weak man responded, the words coming out like water in a newly broken dam, “Only the Kazekage is supposed to know where it is but he was drunk a few weeks back and half the administrative staff heard him complaining about dealing with a clan in Tea Country. Wasabi or Wagarashi or something like that. It was too difficult to tell what exactly he was saying.”

Deidara contemplated the information briefly and then took a couple steps backwards. He doubted the man chained to a chair had enough intelligence to lie about this past denying he knew anything at all. That was fine. He liked his enemies dumb, so long as his allies managed to have a modicum of intelligence in them.

That those same allies tended to mistake him for someone less intelligent than he was hadn’t bothered him in a long time.

He looked at the man tied to the chair in front of him again. "Someone stronger would have gone for the third option, yeah. Katsu."

The man didn’t get the chance to process Deidara’s off-handed comment. His body grew large and garbled as flashes of red filled the area. Gaping, bloody holes were carved into him while bits and pieces of skin and muscles were flung in every direction, splattering against the walls and everything else around him. Smoke started to quietly trail up to the ceiling before disapparating, a jolting transition from the loud clashes that had surrounded them moments before.

Deidara's grin was wild and manic as he focused in on the bloodied corpse limp in the chair. Splatters of blood covered his face and the once-pristine cloak draped over his body but he made no move to wipe it away.

"Beautiful, yeah," he murmured.

The way a body looked as it was ripped apart by his own intentions would never cease to capture his amazement. His eyes always lingered on splatters of blood and the deep holes within the muscles of the corpse as they never looked quite the same as the time before or the time before that. His art was fleeting, one moment in a series of moments and he would never have it any other way.

"You call that art, brat?" Sasori scoffed.

His grin grew. "Yes."

"I suppose there's still time to show you what real art is then."

Deidara couldn't do anything other than take it as the promise he knew it was.


End file.
